Introduction: Dr. Archer is preparing students to read a biography of Harriet Tubman including the following activities: a) teaching background knowledge, b) introducing the pronunciation of multi-syllabic words, and c) teaching critical vocabulary words.

In this video segment, Dr. Archer is introducing the pronunciation of multi-syllabic words within the passage. If students can pronounce these words accurately, it should have a positive impact on their passage reading fluency. Increased reading fluency should have a positive impact on reading comprehension, allowing students to shift their cognitive energy from decoding to passage comprehension.

To see the entire passage reading preparation, see the following videos:

Vocabulary Instruction – Sixth Grade Language Arts

Background Knowledge Instruction – Sixth Grade Language Arts

Focus: As you watch this very short video, note any good practices that Dr. Archer used when introducing the pronunciation of the multi-syllabic words.

Feedback:

Good practices

1) The words were segmented into decodable parts and students were guided in reading each of the parts and then the entire word. This teacher strategy, which is central to the Rewards programs, is referred to as “Loop, Loop, Loop”.

Having the students read the words by parts serves to reinforce a generalizable decoding strategy (Say the parts. Say the parts quickly. Say the word. Make it a real word.) that can be used when decoding other unknown words and at the same time introducing passage vocabulary.

2) Affixes, even those containing more than one syllable (e.g., ary), were treated as a “word part” so that recognition of the affix was reinforced.

3) In most cases, students were “asked” to say the word part. However, if the part was difficult to decode (e.g., ‘suade’ in persuade), Dr. Archer modeled the pronunciation of the word part and students repeated the word part.